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The Kernel Graphics Interface (KGI) Is Effectively Dead

07-03-2011, 08:50 AM

Phoronix: The Kernel Graphics Interface (KGI) Is Effectively Dead

While the FreeBSD Foundation is now paying for Linux kernel mode-setting and GEM/TTM memory management to be ported to BSD -- and they are making some progress -- this isn't the first attempt at moving major parts of the graphics stack into the kernel. Pre-dating Linux KMS/DRM is the KGI Project, which still is technically around, but it's pretty much dead in terms of new development and any hope of the Kernel Graphics Interface reaching its goals...

Why don't you announce that Keith Packard's Kdrive is dead? And the old XFree86 organization? Cedega? OpenSolaris?

Oh, wait... you've done a story on all of those. Hmm, what else is there out there that's dead that you haven't announced yet?

Dead / inactive / unmaintained free software projects are unfortunate (especially if they had promise in their design and vision), but they're a fact of life. Let's focus on things that are making progress, not things that have been left in the dust for years.

The only death notices I'd be interested in hearing are projects that experience a sudden, marked downfall after being fairly steady and popular for a while. For example, if 90% of the existing Linux DRM and Mesa developers explicitly announced that they're all quitting the project, I'd want to hear about it first from Phoronix. But that's only because Linux DRM and Mesa are, today, extremely relevant. I'd never even heard of KGI, and I've been using GNU/Linux since the KGI project was founded -- that shows you how irrelevant it was, even back then, but moreso today. Was it ever even deployed in a remotely popular Linux distribution? I've used and/or hacked on Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora, OpenSUSE, Gentoo, RHEL, Slackware and Arch over the years, but I've never even seen the acronym KGI.

Damn it, now you've made me curious. Just as I'm slamming the article for talking about long-irrelevant things, I'm suddenly a history buff of old vaporware. lol.. Maybe I will spend the next 3 hours reading ML postings about it now.

Comment

Damn it, now you've made me curious. Just as I'm slamming the article for talking about long-irrelevant things, I'm suddenly a history buff of old vaporware. lol.. Maybe I will spend the next 3 hours reading ML postings about it now.

Yep, some mild form of entertainment on an otherwise slow (US) holiday weekend for news...

Why don't you announce that Keith Packard's Kdrive is dead? And the old XFree86 organization? Cedega? OpenSolaris?

Oh, wait... you've done a story on all of those. Hmm, what else is there out there that's dead that you haven't announced yet?

Dead / inactive / unmaintained free software projects are unfortunate (especially if they had promise in their design and vision), but they're a fact of life. Let's focus on things that are making progress, not things that have been left in the dust for years.

The only death notices I'd be interested in hearing are projects that experience a sudden, marked downfall after being fairly steady and popular for a while. For example, if 90% of the existing Linux DRM and Mesa developers explicitly announced that they're all quitting the project, I'd want to hear about it first from Phoronix. But that's only because Linux DRM and Mesa are, today, extremely relevant. I'd never even heard of KGI, and I've been using GNU/Linux since the KGI project was founded -- that shows you how irrelevant it was, even back then, but moreso today. Was it ever even deployed in a remotely popular Linux distribution? I've used and/or hacked on Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora, OpenSUSE, Gentoo, RHEL, Slackware and Arch over the years, but I've never even seen the acronym KGI.

disagree
a) Someone might read this and pick the project up
b) It's interesting to see what other people did to solve the same problems
c) Back when the "cedega is dead" news appeared on phoronix, I was not aware of that, but I was interested in it anyways ...

Comment

Damn it, now you've made me curious. Just as I'm slamming the article for talking about long-irrelevant things, I'm suddenly a history buff of old vaporware. lol.. Maybe I will spend the next 3 hours reading ML postings about it now.

exactly. moreover, it sounds like the thing i would imagine KMS/DRM should be what a shame.